CLASS OF 1975: the older we get, the better we were...

« Here he is: our class's most famous alum and someone I knew as a teenager! A multi-page spread in Newsweek that reveals many things about our former classmate, including the factoid that his father was a successful tailor who in the 1960s, made suits for entertainment notables Otis Redding, James Brown and B.B. King.

« The "turd under the nose" expression doesn't line up with the funny, humorous college student we all knew back then.

Freshman Year, 1971 First Davis:

I was at one end of the hall with a genius-IQ roommate who loved to demonstrate that fact at every opportunity. We had bunk beds in a room that was a single the year before. My roommate likely wondered how the same admissions department that let him in, let in this hick from Iowa, me.

I could write a sociology thesis on the characters who inhabited the rooms on that floor, my freshman year but I wouldn't get any extra credit so...another time.

At the other end of the hall there on First Davis, was another former single turned into a double with the budding film student from Kansas City, Jim Benoit rooming with the future national pastor of choice, Kirbyjon Caldwell.

I remember how this Kirbyjon always had a smile on his face and suffered fools gladly, especially fools like me. Parents were never really discussed among the incoming frosh, unless they were famous somehow. Kirbyjon's parents became famous among everyone on First Davis when they sent him a barbeque turkey for Thanksgiving. This was before Federal Express, remember...

One late afternoon, when we were sitting in Benoit's room [and Kirbyjon was elsewhere], we put on an album [likely Luskus Delph from Procol Harum] and after a few beers and who knows what else... the door opened just a crack and a hand appeared next to the light switch. All of a sudden, the lights in the room were strobing to the beat of the music. After the crescendo, we lifted the needle off the platter, looked up to find the smiling face of Kirbyjon filling the doorway. We all did a hearty Elvis, "Thanks, thank-you very much!" and he turned and walked down the hallway into history...

-Tim Corwin